Nazi Germany
by RinaCath
Summary: Germany reflects on his past with his destructive alter-ego. One-shot.


**I started wondering about this when I was.. ah… supposed to be writing my other story. Anyway.**

**Just a little one-shot because I can. Best reason to do anything. **

**I know that this conflicts with the whole story line in the canon, but… just go with it? Ah, whatever, I'm mangling canon, I deny nothing.**

**And no, I do not support the "Prussia is the Holocaust" idea. Because it makes no sense. Events don't have personifications. Countries, maybe. But events, however horrible? No. Sorry.**

**Warning: If this doesn't make you even a little sad, there's something wrong with you.**

**I don't own a single thing.**

"You really insist on coming here every year?"

"Just be quiet." Germany hushed his older brother. "I didn't _ask_ you to come."

Prussia yawned and stretched his arms over his head. "You didn't have to."

Germany rolled his eyes and stopped finally. Prussia looked down.

"This is it?"

Germany nodded, looking down at the small cement slab embedded on the ground. He shoved his hands in his pockets, quiet.

"Sometimes I wonder why you miss him so much." Prussia was bored, and bored was never a good thing.

"I don't know, really. I wouldn't say I miss him. I feel sorry for him, yes. He was corrupted and twisted by everything." Germany said at last. "Do I wish he'd never died? No."

"So why do you come here, if you don't miss him and you're glad he's dead?"

"Maybe not dead so much. Gone. I kind of wished I could have helped him."

"He practically beat you and locked you away in a basement. He killed so many people you were constantly dizzy, remember?" Prussia sighed and folded his arms across his chest. "I'd think you'd hate him."

"I do, in a way. I'm still scared of him, I always feel like he might come back and try it all again. Or some other idiot might take power again and bring him back."

"That can happen?" Prussia asked.

Germany shrugged. "Who really knows? I didn't think the same country could have two faces."

"I've never seen it before." Prussia brushed away the dirt and leaves on the gravestone they were standing by with his foot. It was very simple, no years or pictures or tear-jerking lines. Just a name.

_Nazi Germany_

"Weird, how you two looked exactly alike. Well, sort of, he always looked way scarier than you."

"We just sort of spilt apart not long after Adolf took control. I don't remember it, really, a lot of things are fuzzy from those days."

Prussia scowled at Germany's tendency to use his old boss' first name.

"I still remember when Adolf told the world they were married." Germany laughed. "He looked like he wanted to kill him."

"Your boss was a weird dude." Prussia agreed. "And so was he." Prussia jerked his head in the direction of the gravestone.

"Power does bad things to people." Germany said quietly. "He wasn't so bad in the beginning. That's how Adolf got power, I was so desperate for leadership, and he convinced the people that he would make me great." Germany shrugged. "I guess in the end he never did."

Prussia looked at his little brother, staring down at the gravestone that was all that was left of his twisted alter-ego.

"Why do you come here, if it just reminds you of World War II?"

Germany didn't answer for a while. "Because if I forget I'll make the same mistakes." He didn't look up. "I don't want to be responsible for so many people dying again."

Prussia sighed. He checked that no one was around and put his arm around his brother. "You weren't really responsible for them dying. That was all him. That's all he did, kill people. Nothing else, really."

"I let Adolf take power, and he's the one that caused _him_." Germany kicked the gravestone gently. "If I hadn't trusted him from the start, none of this would have happened."

"It's not like you could have known-"

Germany laughed humorlessly. "He let everyone know what he wanted. He wrote a damn book on it."

Prussia and Germany stood there for a while, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Germany spoke up again.

"I think I'd started going corrupt, in those days. I was still weak from World War I, and everything seemed so bleak. Then Adolf came out of nowhere, promising he'd make it better. And I believed him."

"Germany, come on, this wasn't your fault." Prussia insisted.

"You know most people don't know there were two of us? Nazi Germany and Germany. Quite the pair. Early on, he made it seem like we would take the world by storm, rule it all." Germany looked up, still avoiding Prussia's eyes. "He started sending people away, and I believed him when he told me they were bad, they were terrible, they weren't human. I _believed_ him. Why?"

"A lot of people believed him." Prussia reminded him quietly.

"But _I_ believed him! Ridiculous! And then that suddenly wasn't good enough, and Adolf had his damn "Final Solution". People _dying_. Being killed for no reason at all. Thrown into showers with their families and killed with poison gas. Men watching their wives and children burn as they starved to death, told over and over than they were worthless and that they ought to be dead, but they were working instead." Germany swallowed finally, throat closed up. "Men who couldn't take it anymore. Some killed themselves, you know. Threw themselves against electric fences."

"I know."

"Plenty of them starved to death. A lot more died just because people were _bored._"

"I know."

"They thought they were less than human, and that's ridiculous, but.. I wouldn't treat a dog so badly. They didn't treat them like they weren't human, they treated them like they weren't _alive_."

"I know."

"Stop saying that!" Germany turned on Prussia. "Do you know, do you really? Did you feel it when my government became so corrupt people would later refer to it as a 'genocide state'? Did you know that some people could smell the gas before it killed them? Did you know men had to push their own dead wives and children into the flames and watch them burn? Did you know some couldn't take it anymore and threw themselves into the fires? Did you know they used babies for _target practice_? Did you know they lined people up and killed them? Did you know by the end I'd started to _rationalize_ killing? It was just a matter of efficiency. Mass murder, sure, just another governmental aim. Keep track of it, and don't forget to stay on top of the war!"

"Yes, Germany, I know."

"_Do you_? How about this, then, did you know that they sewed twins together, back to back? Did you hear it when they screamed out all night, smell it when their flesh started to die, see it when their own mother gave them a fatal dose of morphine to end their suffering? Because I did. Nazi Germany dragged me out all over the place, made me look and see what he'd accomplished. And I had to hide my horror, because if I let him know I felt sorry for the people being punished for nothing at all he'd lock me away again, make me suffer."

"Calm down, Germany, it's not worth it to get so worked up, he's gone now."

"Not worth it, huh? Those people, they deserve to be forgotten? I should just let it go, let them go? When I walked past the line to the showers, and a little boy grabbed my pants, wanted to know where his father was, I'm supposed to forget him? I'm supposed to forget when Nazi Germany laughed and hit him across the face? Told him his father was scum and he was worse? Supposed to forget when I watched his mother calm him and tell him that soon they'd be clean and comfortable and his father would be waiting for him when they came out?"

"Germany, it was horrible, but it's in your past. It's over."

"Would you forget it, if you watched a man kill his own brother for a bowl of watered down soup?" Germany turned away from Prussia. "Would you sleep at night know it was all your fault?"

"Germany, for the last time, it wasn't _you_. It was him, the bastard you're standing on! The one rotting in the ground right now, because of what he did. Because of what he did and you didn't." Prussia turned Germany around again and pointed at the gravestone. "Him."

Germany scowled down at the stone slab.

"Repeat that. Tell me whose fault it is."

"Get the hell off me." Germany pushed Prussia away.

"Tell me!" Prussia refused to move.

"It's my damn fault-"

"Wrong! Try again." Prussia stood his ground.

Germany sighed heavily. "His. Nazi Germany. It was his fault. Happy?"

"I will be when you believe it." Prussia let go of Germany. "Why is it so hard for you to let it be the past?"

"When it happened, people couldn't believe it, something like that happening, in the middle of the 20th century. People say something like it couldn't happen again. But I know that anything is possible." Germany turned and started walking away, leaving Prussia to hurry after him. "If I forget anything, let the horror slip away… I might let it happen again."

"Germany, come on." Prussia ran in front of Germany and put his hands on his shoulders to stop him. "You think anyone would let something like this happen again?"

"That's the point, Prussia. No one thinks it could. Hell, no one thought it could then. I'm not letting myself forget, and I'm not letting my guard down."

But Prussia was adamant. "I don't care if you take those memories to the grave. But you're going to forgive yourself."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because you've forgiven him." Prussia nodded towards the gravestone.

"So?"

"Germany, you need to let this _go_. Remember until the end of time, fine. Think about those twins or that boy or those brothers everyday if you want but you need to tell me that you forgive yourself for letting it happen.

"I…"

"Say it." Prussia demanded.

"It wasn't my fault." Germany finally said, and this time Prussia could hear his voice break. "It's not my fault they suffered, it's not my fault they died."

Prussia smiled and took his hands off Germany's shoulders. "Better?"

Germany rolled his eyes. "Sure. Can we go now?"

"Yup." Prussia stepped aside and let Germany past.

"Oh, and Prussia?"

"Yah?"

"Thanks. For everything."

Prussia grinned and folded his arms behind his head. "It's what I do."


End file.
